Hey! Really love all you recs :) I was wondering if you know any Drarry fics where "working out" or getting fit is one of the main themes? Thank you! <3
Hi there, of course! Here are some recs for you:
in corpore sano by @jalesidor (M, WIP)
Malfoy’s early morning calls are one of three constants in Harry’s life, along with the scattered dumbbells no one bothers to put back and the red wisp of dawn that scrapes his eyes raw.
Let’s go dip it low (then you bring it up slow) by @andithiel (T, 3.7k)
Draco was not prepared to run into Potter in a Muggle gym, especially not a provocatively dressed, dancing and flirtatious Potter. Or, the one where Harry is a dancer and Draco is not okay.
Work It Out by @goldentruth813 (E, 4.5k)
The Auror Trainees now have required gym time, and Draco is distracted by Potter’s equipment. His workout equipment, that is.
turn my blue heart to red by M0stlyVoid (M, 4.5k)
Harry figured he'd never see Draco Malfoy again after their disastrous not-a-relationship-no-really-Hermione ended after Eighth Year, but Harry's never been lucky, so naturally it's Head Healer Malfoy who's swanning all over Harry's emergency department, looking all pale and accomplished and competent as he sneers down at Harry's systems and processes.
Gym Class by drarryangels (G, 4.7k) - AU
Draco is absolutely dreading having to take gym, until a certain dark haired individual walks into his life.
At a Place Where Accountants Work by RoonilWazlibMalfoy (M, 8k)
Nobody asks you questions when you say you're an accountant. But sometimes you have to put yourself out there before anything good can happen.
Benevolence and Redemption by silvered_glass (M, 19k)
Draco's the most unlikely Auror recruited to the department in at least three centuries. Ostracised and unwanted, he's been on paperwork duties for the three years since he finished training.
Counteract by YesIsAWorld | E | 1883
Louis comes up with a plan to get Harry's attention.
don't care if you're too loud by disgruntledkittenface | M | 2495
Inspired by this tweet
Missed Connection by Kingsofeverything | M | 2997
Harry is absolutely clueless when it comes to figuring out if other guys are into him, so he enlists his friend Niall to assist. That may or may not be a mistake.
you got what i need by jaerie | E | 3307
Harry loves his husband Louis, but his personal trainer Liam just gives him something he needs to start his day. Turns out Louis needs the same thing. Oddly enough, they get it from the same source.
breakfast of champions by turnyourankle | E | 6453
An injury relegates Harry to the weight room; Louis wears a lot of interesting shirts.
AKA Harry and Louis are gym buddies.
Members Only by kikikryslee | M | 14484
“Well, I’m gonna go work out now, so…” Harry said, his voice trailing off.
Louis nodded. “Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Go get, uh, you know, strong and buff.”
What?
Louis wanted to die.
“Um, thanks?” Harry said. “Um…”
Without another word, Harry walked away from the desk.
Louis pinched his thigh – hard – hoping that was some terrible, awkward nightmare that he might soon wake up from.
---
Or, the one where Louis works at Harry's new gym and neither one of them knows how to hold a coherent conversation with the other.
A blur of different faces but none of them were you by Rearviewdreamer | M | 22307
Harry thought he had this whole personal training thing down until a boy with blue eyes wanders into his gym.
or
Harry is Louis' trainer at the gym and Niall is a horrible insult to physically fit people everywhere.
We Can Work It Out by kassio | E | 24390
Louis Tomlinson had big plans for his last year of uni. He was going to hit the gym, he was going to get hot, and he was finally going to catch the eye of the girl of his dreams.
Enter Harry Styles, friend-of-a-friend and part-time personal trainer. Falling for him was never part of Louis’ plan.
The Habit I Can't Break by Cyantific | E | 63140
While searching for a healthy alternative to fill the void that one habit left, Louis gets hooked on something and someone totally different. This new experience pushes him way out of his comfort zone, making Louis realize he’s capable of so much more than he could’ve ever imagined.
Or… The one where Louis quits smoking and tries to get healthy, and Harry is the fitness instructor who helps him achieve those goals while making him sweat in and out of the gym. In which Harry and Louis still meet at bootcamp, just not the one you’re thinking of.
Featuring Lottie as the supportive sister who drags her brother to bootcamp class, Louis as the grumpy (and very recent) ex-smoker, and Harry as the instructor with exhausting amounts of enthusiasm and one obnoxious pair of yellow trainers.
(Comes back after a week of unscheduled not posting.) Oops? I was still sick for most of last week unfortunately but I’m finally better so I should be back on track now.
Ash challenges his next gym in this episode, and the policy of this stupid gym is legit so annoying. You can’t challenge it if you don’t like perfume? He’s a ten year old boy, most of them do not care about perfume. I get that he was rude about it, but I’m fully on Ash’s side here.
Tfw you’re used to the wilderness instead of the city.
Ash is the odd man out now, the new trio is Pikachu Misty and Brock.
Another cool looking gym, and another one that doesn’t seem to have any signage that it’s a gym.
So, most boys aren't allowed in the gym then?
Wow, very mature. You, a full grown woman, are sticking your tongue out at a ten year old boy. You sure showed him.
Ah Meowth, I love you.
Jesse and Meowth kicking at each other is fun, I love it when they’re petty and fight.
And so begins a tradition of Ash dressing as a girl, which they stick with for most of the series. Though he doesn’t in X and Y, and I don’t know if he did in Journeys or not,
What a beautiful family.
They either dyed Ash's eyebrows or have a really good eyebrow pencil, Team Rocket knows their little details.
The noise this Grimer made as he was running away from Gloom's stench was very funny/cute.
Ah, Pikachu. helpful as always.
It's only just your JOB lady.
Baby boy!! <3
Ash and Pikachu have a really cute moment in this episode!
I love how Meowth gets bored during the moto and just blows everything up.
That stream of water in the top right is NOT hitting the fire.
Another gym bites the dust in the wake of Ash and co, so far Sabrina’s gym is the only gym to escape unscathed from Ash’s presence.
My heroic boy! This is Ash at his best, doing something kinda stupid but very brave.
And that’s the episode! Ash got his fifth badge by showing off his good character in saving Gloom, and in our next episode my other favorite Pokémon joins the group!!! See you Wednesday. ❤️
Cousin spoke about how the GSD teaches “de-escalation” tactics, and is not just about fighting. He told a story about when he was on patrol with Shomrim and his team confronted a man after a robbery. “He pushed me,” Cousin said. “Instead of pushing him back, I said, ‘I don’t want to fight you.’ I calmed him down. I apologized. That comes from the training — I don’t want to fight, but I’m ready, just in case.”
“This is a last resort program,” he added. “If you put your hands on us, we will remind you that Jewish blood is not cheap.”
Like Legion’s Feldman, Richards is gearing up for a new group of GSD trainees this year who have heard about his Krav Maga program. Richards is the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors and compared the current rise in antisemitism to what his grandparents experienced.
“The Jews are being targeted everywhere — verbally, online, physically. From the right and left, we are now under siege,” Richards said. “If you’re visibly Jewish, you have a double target on your back. We don’t have the luxury of trying to plan what we should do. Everybody should be taking action.”
“There are plenty of people in this class who had never thrown a punch in their life,” Landsman said of his training with Legion. “I’m not asking you to join the UFC [the mixed martial arts league], but you need to be able to stand your ground and unfreeze yourself when somebody is threatening you with violence. You need to know when to run or when there is no retreat and you have to defend yourself.”
The cardiac rehabilitation period is almost over. I don't intend to be foolish and not continue what I've been doing.
But I visited a couple of gyms today. They both had machines lined up as if a surveyor was involved. No fluidity seemed to be involved in the organization. They were two places in the same chain. But when I've glanced at other places while paused in a car, and seen the same thing and thought I had been mistaken.
Could I do this at home if I spent too much money? I guess yes. But do I want a constant reminder? Not really.
I had wanted to take care of setting a place up tonight. Instead I'll go to a couple other places and explore. I did want to use the health benefit part of our insurance, but now that seems secondary.
The importance of public bathrooms and gyms exclusively for women
The reason transgender women and men do not understand the importance public bathrooms have for women, is that they have never grown up as women.
When I was in middle school, female-exclusive bathrooms were a place where I could change from my school uniform to my Taekwondo uniform (I had classes right in the same building and within minutes of finishing school) without any of the boys who bullied me teasing me, trying to see me naked, and making comments about my body that made me uncomfortable. It was a safe space girls have lost in favour of unisex bathrooms.
When I was in high school, female-exclusive bathrooms were the safe place where I found a friend crying her eyes out because of bullying, feeling that at least in the bathroom she'd be left alone, because there were no boys. It was the one sacred, ever-respected rule, of no boys in the girls' bathroom. It was also the place where my mates and I changed from our high school clothes to our Halloween costumes, where my classmates and I changed into costumes and did our hair and make-up for our play (we studied performing arts), and where we all went to touch-up before our graduation party. That bathroom was witness of so many moments of female vulnerability, where a girl just wanted to be alone, away from boys just for a minute, away from their immature teasing, their sexual harassment, their sexual comments, their mockery, their stupidity. That's gone now in favour of unisex bathrooms.
In my adulthood, public female-exclusive bathrooms became places tailored for female necessities (many include tampax, for example), clean spaces (have men heard of that?) of safety. Where if you were uncomfortable with a man, you could run and no way he'd follow. Bear in mind I'm speaking about public bathrooms in universities, in train stations, in shops, in the street, where there are cameras and security right outside that wouldn't allow a man inside until now they're changing into unisex spaces. And inside, there are no cameras and no security, for privacy, so anything can happen. Public bathrooms were for women a sanctuary of complicity and cooperation between women. They'd help with your make-up, they'd give you space to prepare for an incoming job interview, they'd give you a friendly smile when you needed it, or a period pad, or tell you to adjust your clothes if something was wrong, or lend you a tissue if your boyfriend had just left you. They were also a place where mothers could have their little children, knowing they'd be safe while they went to the loo, that no man would hurt them.
A similar thing happens, for example, in public gyms. When I initiated myself into gyms, in adulthood, the memories of the boy school bullies I'd had were still too recent, and I felt severely insecure. I've always looked too thin and too unfit, the kind of woman you'd laugh for daring to lift something heavy. Nobody would suspect that I'm a Taekwondo veteran, and someone who is, as a matter of fact, strong. You'd think athletes would feel naturally comfortable in gyms, but it wasn't for me. I feared men looking at me with mockery, laughing at my attempts to do activities I was new to, and even worse, I feared men looking at me with desire, masturbating or seeing their erections through their clothes, making me insanely uncomfortable and feeling threatened, as it had happened to female friends of mine. So I was super careful choosing my gym. I wanted a female gym, where I was surrounded by people like me who understood my worries and would help me. I wanted to feel we were all in the same boat. I couldn't find a single one.
BUT AT LEAST, I FOUND PUBLIC MIXED-SEX GYMS WITH FEMALE ONLY CHANGING ROOMS, YESS!!!!
And there, it was glorious. To be able to change into my bathing suit with no men looking at me and making comments. In fact, with nobody looking at me and making comments. Sharing tips with women, empathy with women, even shampoo, for our showers were next door. That, now is also gone.
The thing is, women have been threatened by men, sexual assault experiences from men and patriarchy from men, for hundreds of years. We have always seemed to only be there to sexually please men, period. So while men are more individualistic, women have learned to rely on each other, to trust each other only, and innately mistrust men until they prove themselves worthy. This is what men have caused. As a result, us women work in packs. We raise children together after their fathers abandon us, we take care of each other after our husbands go for a younger woman, we are a safe space when men call us names, tease us, mock us, bully us, shame us.
We are a pack, fiercely protective of each other, and it's always been like that. It's why we go together to like, bathrooms and other places where one might be vulnerable - to keep us safe from men. And much like men needed their own spaces to smoke, talk about girls, see girls dancing naked, play sports or whatever the shit they do there, and would be horrified to find their women there, us women, we need our spaces too. To feel safe, to be in community, to be a pack, to do whatever the shit us women do.
Gyms are positive places, but not everyone who goes to the gym is positive. I have a fear of the gym, because I see the videos online. I see the videos of y'all secretly recording a fat person in the gym who is struggling. Someone tried to tell me that they do that to encourage people, but that is bullshit. Did you ask that person if they wanted to be filmed? Did you ask that person if you could use their personal journey for clicks and views? NO, you didn't. You SECRETLY filmed them.
Also realize that not every bigger person who steps in the gym, has weight loss as their goal.
I like to imagine what it would be like if every ad telling me to lose weight, firm up my skin, clear my wrinkles- was an actual human person yelling at me on the street. I would go absolutely feral. I would not allow someone to say that shit to me! But every day we're INNUNDATED with it, and so are all the people we love, and it's wrong wrong wrong. Propaganda designed to make you hate yourself so you'll buy something.
This episode is delightfully spooky, with our main characters being in some real danger! Ash challenges his fourth gym in this one, and the next couple of episodes will be about his journey to actually beat it.
The gang are lost yet again, though lucky for them they don’t spend multiple episodes being lost this time.
Ah yes, a random little girl playing in the woods. Very normal and not creepy.
Ash falls off a cliff and I was impressed by his quick thinking to pull out Bulbasaur to save him. He goes to pull out the pokeball pretty much as soon as he starts falling.
I really like the composition of this shot, it’s very striking.
This shot is fun too, though not quite as much as the previous one.
Hmm, is Ash an adrenaline junkie? 🤔
But hey, at least Ash almost dying led them to the city they were looking for!
Yeah Ash! Stand up for yourself! (I love a good Pokémon joke that makes me laugh out loud for real.)
They’re bored of the theme song already. It’s only episode 22 guys, you’re gonna hear it a whole lot more!
Mystery girl: “Get teleported idiots!” (The gang get teleported three different times this episode and every time they end up about a foot or two too high at their destination so they fall down a bit. Just a random thing to notice.)
This is a weird looking gym, it doesn't even say gym anywhere on the outside. Though I guess it’s a little harder to depict psychic powers as architecture, as compared to elements like water or electricity.
Pikachu hanging off the door here is so cute.
The noises the Japanese voice actor makes here as he’s trying to bend the spoon with his mind are hilarious!
Classic strong Ash, I’m not sure I could just bend a spoon like that. (Though I guess it depends on how thick the metal is.)
Pikach being cute again, this time surprised at the Abra teleporting behind him.
In fact Ash will end having that happen to his Pokémon multiple times thoughout the series, so it’s a good thing it’s not illegal in a match.
Why is their first response to ending up some where that they can’t find anybody to wander into someone’s house and start eating their food? And Brock, how could you not tell that was plastic when you picked it up?? And whyyyyyy are you picking up a piece of cake with your bare hands???
Another fine Pikachu face, this one’s kinda scary in its deformity.
This is a great summery of Ash as a person.
Poor Meowth, he’s the hardest worker of the team. (Jesse and James got paralyzed earlier which is why he’s dragging them now.)
i want to lose weight but i do not want to pay, i’m a college student, i can’t afford that. my college (uk) doesn’t have a gym on site that we can use and i don’t want to pay for a gym membership elsewhere.
if there was a free gym near me, i would go. i genuinely believe i would. and i think a lot of other people would too.